#EyesOnChechnya Came Too Late

Note: This was written when I had a few dozen followers and #TrumpRussia was at a fever pitch. Some big accounts said it distracted from that. How callous that was. Also note there are no eyes on Chechnya now, are there?

I need to say something about #EyesOnChechnya. This would have meant a lot more if everyone had responded to this immediately. This story broke weeks ago, and I saw nothing from anyone. No one voiced outrage, even when some of us tried to alert you to this.

In the interim, thousands of men have been arrested and tortured for information: to rat on their friends, to keep the cycle going. Many of these people succumbed to the torture, giving authorities names of others to go after. Many of these people died.

This is a crisis. This is deadly serious. But we are so wrapped up in our own problems, we have turned inward, ignoring these abuses. If only the people with voices loud enough to be heard had said something, so others could respond in kind.

But that didn’t happen.

Worse, some of these accounts literally said, “How awful, but this is a distraction so I won’t talk about it.” You follow these accounts. How callous. How inhumane. We aren’t worthy of a better country when we become the people we are fighting against.